128273412
submission
knorthern knight writes:
As posted at https://www.kron4.com/news/nat...
(CNN) — The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an emergency use authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
Do the drugs work? In its statement, HHS said:
“Anecdotal reports suggest that these drugs may offer some benefit in the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
“The safety profile of these drugs has only been studied for FDA approved indications, not COVID-19.”
It would take several months of clinical trials to guage its effectiveness, but we don't have the luxury of time. We do know that it helps some COVID-19 patients, and has been in use for many years to treat malaria and other diseases. So it's not poisonous (and no, don't confuse it with fish tank cleaner).
100379436
submission
knorthern knight writes:
Canada's "Alertready" system https://www.alertready.ca/#faq is stupid. You can *NOT* opt out of cellphone alerts. This is because Alertready (ab)uses the unblockable "Presidential Alert" level (intended for incoming missiles, etc) for *ALL* alerts. The story of the first live alert is at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... There were 3 "Presidential" alerts issued for the incident...
1) In English
2) In French
3) A blingual "alert", saying the kid had been found safe
The OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) displayed appalling ignorance. They claimed that it was necessary to alert the entire province because people from eastern Ontario might have been visiting Thunder Bay. This is absolute ignorance. The Alertready website FAQ says that the alerts are specific to individual cell towers, and that all compatable cellphones served by the tower will receive the alert regardless of where the phone is registered to.
Right now the only ways to avoid these messages are
* force your cellphone down to 3G (Alertready only works on LTE)
* get a custom ROM, e.g. Lineage OS, for your cellphone, with "Presidential Alerts" disabled
49045855
submission
knorthern knight writes:
Most major weather services (US NWS, Britain's Met Office, etc) have their own supercomputers, and their own weather models. But there are some models which are used globally. A new paper has been published, comparing outputs from one such program on different machines around the world. Apparently, the same code, running on different machines, can produce different outputs due to accumulation of differing round-off errors. The handling of floating-point numbers in computing is a field in its own right http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html
The paper apparently deals with 10-day weather forecasts. Weather forecasts are generally done in steps of 1 hour. I.e. the output from hour 1 is used as the starting condition for the hour 2 forecast. The output from hour 2 is used as the starting condition for hour 3, etc.
The paper is paywalled, but the abstract at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-12-00352.1 says...
The global model program (GMP) of the Global/Regional Integrated Model system (GRIMs) is tested on 10 different computer systems having different central processing unit (CPU) architectures or compilers. There exist differences in the results for different compilers, parallel libraries, and optimization levels, primarily due to the treatment of rounding errors by the different software systems. The system dependency, which is the standard deviation of the 500-hPa geopotential height averaged over the globe, increases with time. However, its fractional tendency, which is the change of the standard deviation relative to the value itself, remains nearly zero with time. In a seasonal prediction framework, the ensemble spread due to the differences in software system is comparable to the ensemble spread due to the differences in initial conditions that is used for the traditional ensemble forecasting.
33571455
submission
knorthern knight writes:
When 2 light civilian planes collide in US airspace in Virginia, the usual response includes calling in the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) to investigate and make recommendations based on their results. But what do you do when the crash involves two planes piloted by a crash investigator with the FAA and the chief medical officer with the NTSB? In order to avoid conflict of interest by American investigators working for these agencies, the investigation has been turned over to to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada as a neutral 3rd party.
321083
submission
knorthern knight writes:
A weird intersection of copyright/trademark with Canadian politics. Short background. Various Canadian cities and municipalities have launched a publicity/lobbying campaign seeking a fixed take from the GST (Goods and Services Tax, a national Canadian sales tax similar to European VAT). The amount sought is 1 cent for each dollar of the purchase price. This is summarized by the slogan "One Cent of the GST NOW". Acoording to this press release, the Royal Canadian Mint (the federal agency that prints Canadian paper currency and stamps Canadian coins) has demanded royalties for use of the phrase "one cent", and the image of the Canadian penny. The Royal Canadian Mint, a corporation of the federal government, has now demanded that the City of Toronto pay $47,680 for the public education campaign. Included in this amount is a request for $10,000 for the use of the words "one cent" in the campaign website address (www.onecentnow.ca) and the campaign email address (onecentnow@toronto.ca), and an additional $10,000 for the use of the words "one cent" in the campaign phone number (416-ONE CENT). The remaining $27,680 has been assessed against the City for the use of the image of the Canadian penny in printed materials such as pins and posters.
